The Best Holiday Season Ever: Week 5

Ed. Note - Sorry about the late publishing date this week, but we've been digging out from Hurricane/Snowmageddon/Snowpocalypse Sandy

Click here to read earlier entries in this series. Though you've joined the class half-way through, you can still turn a lot of these ideas into easier work and higher profits.

This week features Halloween on Wednesday, so a lot of our time will focus on preparing for, running and recovering from that. As in previous weeks, we're looking at three tasks:

Promoting and Running a Successful Halloween Event

Gathering Data With a Halloween Contest

Week Two of Your Pass it On Event

Halloween Event

Different businesses and communities will have different appropriate events. A day care might host a not-too-scary haunted house, while a local bar could run a sexy costume contest. If you're in the right location, you can always take part in the safe trick-or-treating street festival most towns are doing these days.
Whatever the event, you need to make sure it involves the following key points:

A signup sheet or quick reference code for all visitors with a clear call-to-action to join your text message broadcasts.

Flyers or postcards announcing upcoming events and specials -- which you will announce via text and social media channels.

Inexpensive door prizes, and discounts for bringing new friends to the party.

Keep in mind that sales and fun during the event are not the real goal of your Halloween shindig. Your real goal here is to increase the number of people who know about your business, and to learn how to contact as many of them as possible.

Halloween Contest

Not everybody will be able to come in on Halloween Night to join your big event, but you don't want to leave them out. Broadcast your Halloween photo contest via SMS, social media and emails. Again, what the contest is about will depend on your audience. Kid-friendly contest might be about costumes, or photos of jack-o-lanterns. Adult businesses might be considerably more risque.

The point here is engagement and participation, so offer a discount or free prize for all participants and a bigger gimme for the winners. Also offer an additional benefit for any new subscribers to participate, and for people who bring in a friend.

Pass It On Week Two

Last week you put the word out about your subscription drive, which you'll run this week right alongside your party and contest. This may seem like a lot of work, but it capitalizes on the energy of the holiday and you'll get more participation.

You set up tiers of prizes, for escalating people brought in as subscribers, likers or otherwise signed up with your media channels. Each day this week, announce the results and send one message on each major channel about the prizes and the deadlines. By the end of the week, you should have a significant increase in the number of people signed up to hear about what's going on with your business. This means more people participating in your bigger sales days going into November and December.

How's this working out for you, readers? Tell us your stories and ask us your questions in the comments.